This was a great day! It is great to have such awesome friends and family, and I am so grateful to Rusty and Christie for sharing their facility and equipment with me. It has been a game changer for sure. What do you think of our set up?
Looks like you guys have quite a system! You could have used a couple of more hands and I would have been glad to help but 2000 miles is a long way to go 😀
Glad your hand is okay. I always enjoy bees cleaning frames like that. It’s amazing. You had an awesome year for honey. Congratulations and great teamwork!!
Wow! That project was amazing to watch! People don’t realize how much work goes into the bee keeping and the harvest of the honey. Raw honey has so many beneficial properties for our bodies. Thanks guys, I live raw honey, eat some everyday!
A great harvet & good result, apart from the industrial injury: glad it wasn't more serious. Of course you still have to bottle it I presume. Take care & I'll catch you on the next one 👍
I'm lucky. I only keep one or 2 hives for my garden and fruit trees. I tend to harvest honey a little at a time. I always leave the bees a few frames of honey but usually pull 2-4 frames at a time. I have a 2 frame spinner so i try to pull only what i can spin at one time but may pull for a couple days at a time. That way it doesn't stress my bees as much and that way they can clean them up in hive as they go. It also lets me know when we are going into dearth.
That has been awesome watching all your team work. What a honey season for you this year! It has been great watching your journey....keep the videos coming!
That's amazing guys!!! Have 9 supers mostly full. Two deep and rest are medium. Gonna pull em tomorrow morning if not raining. Rusty has a great setup!! Thank you!!
It has been a good year. Now the difficult and “not fun” part of the year starts. Hive checks and fixing problems, cleaning up dead outs etc. Will be interesting to see what we end up with.
Absolutely! Congrats on your harvest. For some that is enough but I’m sure that if you want to grow you will be able to reach your goals, whatever they are. Thanks for checking in!
Great to see an awesome harvest for you! I am extracting this weekend and I am excited to see what the girls have done this year so far. I grabbed a Simple Harmony last year because of your videos. So much better than a bread knife! Good luck the rest of your season.
Very impressive set-up y'all had going there. Really opened my eyes as to what I might have to look forward too. That looks like that hurt friend hope it's healing up ok. That's a lot of honey!
SWEET. Dang ~4,500 pounds of HONEY. Man said it was more work than he thought. You want a job? Get you some bees, keep them healthy and help them bee productive. Thanks for sharing
You need some migratory covers with a built in rim. Use them as bottom boards for the supers. Makes it where you can use a dolly to move the supers. It also catches the cappings when the bees clean out the supers.
AMAZING SET UP , fantastic teamwork with family and friends , sweetness abound and gorgeous honey 🍯... THAT ... right there ... IS MY GOAL to have that someday ... set up and all !!! GREAR WORK
Donate a case to the Salvation Army, or your local church, to your womens crisis center, or to your local police and sheriff's departments. Anyway you can get your brand out there. No good sitting on a shelf crystalizing.
Great video guys. This was particularly satisfying to watch. Do you see a spike in honey in the surrounding hives after they clean up those spun combs. It would be cool to see a before and after of a hive near that trailer.
Awesome video, thanks for showing the entire process. It doesn’t end after the last bucket is capped, clean up can take just as long. A lot of work. Hope you hand heals quickly. Where will you store all the buckets, is there something special you have to do with them in storage?
We got the boxes stored and stacked and the buckets moved from the honey house to a storage room at the farm. I use Enoz Ice Crystals (same ingredients as Paramoth) to preserve the frames. Got down after 9 pm last night. Stacking boxes and lugging buckets wore me out.
I wonder what it would look like to roll the door up and let the bees clean the mess. Then come behind with less clean up. Not the boxes. Surely you'd have to run some CAUTION tape. So how long would it take the bees? Also it would be a good video.
It would be a crazy situation for sure haha. At the end of the video you might get a little idea of what it would be like. We just wanted to get it all cleaned up quickly and with the pressure washer set up it really doesn’t take long. Thanks for watching and for checking in.
Just like a timex there Bruce…… “takes a licking and keeps on ticking!” Lol. You hardly missed a beat…. Great job! Curious about how long you run your Maxant 20 frame for during each batch? I just got ours this spring and was wondering how others were doing with it. Mike
We run it at a speed where it begins slinging honey for a few minutes until it seems to be spinning freely and easily. Then we turn it up to full speed until it is no longer slinging honey out. We j must look down the edge with a light. Careful with that kid though lol.
Congratulations on a great harvest. On a different subject, what kind of queen excluder do you use? Metal or plastic? If plastic, what kind and are they expendable? Metal ones are very hard to clean. Thanks for your advice? I am in north Al. and look forward to each video as anew bee keeper .
I mostly use plastic. I ordered several from Pierco this year and I like them. I think they are all hard to clean. Given a choice I would probably use metal. They are tougher overall but are much more expensive. I may switch one day but for now will just use what I have.
Great video, Bruce! I only Have backyard hives. I have a 4 frame extractor. Why do I have such issue with it shaking and being off balance? I have it bolted down to plywood and even stand on the plyWood but it still shakes and moves!
Yes it is always an issue. Out extractors are bolted down to the floor and they still tend to work their way loose sometimes. The only thing I know to do is try to distribute the weight as evenly as possible but even then it can get a little wild. We have done a lot of leaning on extractors over the years.
You can use caster roller bearings underneath a board to allow the extractor to walk about a bit.Try to get even size cut Combs,if pollen in combs will get uneven as extraction proceeds.never leave motorised extractor running unattended
Yes. Comb is like gold to the beekeeper. If you can preserve it the bees can reuse it without having to put forth the effort Ot build more. I allows them to focus on other things like honey production and helps maximize the harvest.
@@brucesbees thank you mr. Bruce! I appreciate it. I got upto 9 big hives and 5 nucs this year, 3rd year beekeeping, 2nd year grafting, only ever bought my first 2 hives and did the rest with splits. but had to sell them all to leave germany with the military to come back stateside. When i finish my military time i am hoping to get up to 50 or so and thought that was roughly what you had.
You mean the pin roller? We use it on any cells that may not have been sliced by the Simple Harmony Farms Uncapper. Sometimes there is a low area or really tough old comb. We just try to make sure that pretty much all the cells are sliced.
It depends on the area. I mostly store mine in the buckets and bottle the honey up in different sized bottles depending on need. But if someone wants a 5 gallon bucket my current price is $250.
We definitely have honey for sale haha. Here is the link to the Simple Harmony Farms Uncapper: simpleharmonyfarms.com/uncapper. Rusty customized the uncapping tanks from products he purchased locally. They work well.
@@brucesbees that's awesome! This year was my biggest year as well but only had about 5 out of my 10 hives to pull honey from. I was excited for getting 20 gallons worth!
yesss the video i asked for haha and this is my first year bee keeping and my queen died but they seem to be trying to replace her by making queens cells do you think they will still be able to make a queen and get a good enough colony going before winter to survive
so how hard is it to sell honey? I never buy it and never been in the position to try and sell it lol. But I want to dabble in apiculture since I like gardening.
I just let the bees clean it up and then melt it down and process it. Still trying to get that process figured out. I don’t love working with the wax but it is something that needs to be done.
I came by and picked up the trailer a couple of days later and moved it to the farm. Just unloaded them yesterday (one week later). But really anytime after the bees are done cleaning them out is good.
I always heard never to give honey to bees that didnt produce it in the first place, something something about cross infecting colonies? Correct me if i am wrong, new beekeeper here.
Great video. How long did you leave the trailer with the empty supers? Those bees were in a free for all. Did you clean up at the end with only water in the extractor or did you add soap?
We left the supers on the trailer for 6 days but probably could have taken them off sooner. We just used water. Honey melts away quickly with water. There is a good chance the extractors won’t be used again until next year so I’m sure we will make sure they are appropriately clean before using again.
This was a great day! It is great to have such awesome friends and family, and I am so grateful to Rusty and Christie for sharing their facility and equipment with me. It has been a game changer for sure. What do you think of our set up?
Looks like you guys have quite a system! You could have used a couple of more hands and I would have been glad to help but 2000 miles is a long way to go 😀
I hear ya lol. We are figuring it out. Not just have to figure out how to sell all this honey!
Very nice! Great job!
Very cool....so, you have found the pin roller to be the best thing to use in conjunction with that new uncapper? Better than scratching forks, etc?
Probably doesn’t matter much as long as the cells are all punctured or open. The pin roller works well but a fork or scratcher also can be used.
Thanks for the journey. Awesome to watch what a little bee 🐝 can do.
No doubt. They are amazing creatures!
what a great local community of hard working friends you have bruce. beautiful.
Yes! I am truly blessed!
watching this made me drool. Honey... love it.
👍517 Awesome Harvest!!! Killed it!!!
Congratulations on the honey harvest
Great video! Great harvest! I am in awe at the honey harvest. The video was great. Thanks for sharing it with us.
120 boxes.... Wow!
Great job Bruce..
Thanks for sharing!
That was pretty cool Bruce it’s a nice set up and amazing on all the bees craning all of the frames
Yes it was a good day.
Glad your hand is okay. I always enjoy bees cleaning frames like that. It’s amazing. You had an awesome year for honey. Congratulations and great teamwork!!
That's amazing! Hoping to add bees to our Homestead one day but until then I buy local honey and beeswax . Thanks for sharing! ~jc
Thanks for checking in!
Wow! That project was amazing to watch! People don’t realize how much work goes into the bee keeping and the harvest of the honey. Raw honey has so many beneficial properties for our bodies. Thanks guys, I live raw honey, eat some everyday!
Yes. Most have no idea of the work involved but I love it. It was a good day!
A great harvet & good result, apart from the industrial injury: glad it wasn't more serious. Of course you still have to bottle it I presume. Take care & I'll catch you on the next one 👍
Yes still a lot of work to do.
I'm lucky. I only keep one or 2 hives for my garden and fruit trees. I tend to harvest honey a little at a time. I always leave the bees a few frames of honey but usually pull 2-4 frames at a time. I have a 2 frame spinner so i try to pull only what i can spin at one time but may pull for a couple days at a time. That way it doesn't stress my bees as much and that way they can clean them up in hive as they go. It also lets me know when we are going into dearth.
That is an insane Honey Harvest. . Nice work Bruce. Well, Nice work by the Girls. 🐝🐝
That has been awesome watching all your team work. What a honey season for you this year! It has been great watching your journey....keep the videos coming!
I am blessed to have good family and friends. Couldn’t do it without them.
GREAT work Bruce! I sure enjoy your videos. How about a video of how you market and sell all of that beautiful honey?
Hey that’s a great idea! Maybe I need to figure out a way to do that!
That's a lot of honey!! You're trying to catch up with Mr. Ed!! I made my fume boards today. Thanks Bruce!
Great. Good luck!
OMG you guys ran that like your in the military heads up and eyes open keep moving forward . Kick ass job and video. 👍🏽🇺🇸
Awesome job!! What a great team to get the job done.
Amazing!!!!
That's amazing guys!!! Have 9 supers mostly full. Two deep and rest are medium. Gonna pull em tomorrow morning if not raining. Rusty has a great setup!! Thank you!!
Wow. Sounds like they are doing well. Good to hear from you Ron!
@@brucesbees I totally blame you Bruce and if there is ever anything I can do to repay you then don't hesitate to ask.
Thanks man. I am thrilled to hear your bees are still doing well.
You had a great year!! Thanks for sharing it all with us! Love your channel.
I'm glad you weren't hurt worse! Looking forward to more from you!
It has been a good year. Now the difficult and “not fun” part of the year starts. Hive checks and fixing problems, cleaning up dead outs etc. Will be interesting to see what we end up with.
My operation in MI seems to have a lot in common with this setup here. Love my Simple Harmony Farms uncapper. Also, go Cougs!
Yes! Rise and shout! Thanks for checking in!!
I think it's been a good year for honey most places, I know it has in north, ms. Good job guys.
Solid work! Makes me aspire to do more but for now my 3 super harvest will do 🙂. Appreciate the videos and Happy BeeKeeping!
Absolutely! Congrats on your harvest. For some that is enough but I’m sure that if you want to grow you will be able to reach your goals, whatever they are. Thanks for checking in!
Great to see an awesome harvest for you! I am extracting this weekend and I am excited to see what the girls have done this year so far. I grabbed a Simple Harmony last year because of your videos. So much better than a bread knife! Good luck the rest of your season.
Thanks for checking in and good luck with your harvest!
Strong work & great harvest
Love the ending scene with the bees helping with the clean up.
That is always a show. It is a rush to be standing right there amongst them. I love it!
Very impressive set-up y'all had going there. Really opened my eyes as to what I might have to look forward too. That looks like that hurt friend hope it's healing up ok. That's a lot of honey!
Nicely done my friend! Congrats on the harvest!
Thanks!
How many buckets of honey will the bees collect on the clean up? Be fun to know
Good question. I have no idea!
SWEET. Dang ~4,500 pounds of HONEY. Man said it was more work than he thought. You want a job? Get you some bees, keep them healthy and help them bee productive. Thanks for sharing
Bruce, wow you have a lot of honey to sell! You need to sale it by the 5 gallon bucket! Thanks for the video!
Yes it is a daunting task. Will see how it goes.
Awesome job Bruce. Most I talk to had a record year, including myself.
Yes it’s been good. “Make hay while the sun shines” as they say. Next year could be a bad year. You just never know.
You need some migratory covers with a built in rim. Use them as bottom boards for the supers.
Makes it where you can use a dolly to move the supers. It also catches the cappings when the bees clean out the supers.
Sounds like a good idea. Thanks. I have a few lids with patty rims but not many.
Those Brute tubs are nice. I did a single chamber uncapping tank out of one. Works well, was cheap.
AMAZING SET UP , fantastic teamwork with family and friends , sweetness abound and gorgeous honey 🍯... THAT ... right there ... IS MY GOAL to have that someday ... set up and all !!! GREAR WORK
Keep working at it and no doubt you will reach your goals. Thanks for checking in.
I've still got honey left from last year can't get rid of. You have a ton, or two :)
Donate a case to the Salvation Army, or your local church, to your womens crisis center, or to your local police and sheriff's departments. Anyway you can get your brand out there. No good sitting on a shelf crystalizing.
It’s good to donate some for sure. But I try to sell most of mine. I make sure it is decrystallized before I bottle it up.
Outstanding video brother!!! God sure blessed us both this year! I still say let them keep the fall honey though!!!
Absolutely.
Love your work mate. Good stuff.
Thanks!
Great video guys. This was particularly satisfying to watch. Do you see a spike in honey in the surrounding hives after they clean up those spun combs. It would be cool to see a before and after of a hive near that trailer.
Good question. Have never really thought of it but I doubt if they put much in the hives. Very little honey is left in those frames.
Awesome video, thanks for showing the entire process. It doesn’t end after the last bucket is capped, clean up can take just as long. A lot of work. Hope you hand heals quickly. Where will you store all the buckets, is there something special you have to do with them in storage?
We got the boxes stored and stacked and the buckets moved from the honey house to a storage room at the farm. I use Enoz Ice Crystals (same ingredients as Paramoth) to preserve the frames. Got down after 9 pm last night. Stacking boxes and lugging buckets wore me out.
Congrats. Need to find a local brewery to sell to. They make amazing honey ale
I wonder what it would look like to roll the door up and let the bees clean the mess. Then come behind with less clean up. Not the boxes. Surely you'd have to run some CAUTION tape. So how long would it take the bees? Also it would be a good video.
It would be a crazy situation for sure haha. At the end of the video you might get a little idea of what it would be like. We just wanted to get it all cleaned up quickly and with the pressure washer set up it really doesn’t take long. Thanks for watching and for checking in.
@@brucesbees
It would definitely be a mad house.
But could be amazing to watch.
But I'm on your side, shut the door before it starts. 😀
Awesome crop man!
Yes! I have been blessed beyond measure this year, in many ways. Now I just have to figure out how to get rid of it!
Just like a timex there Bruce…… “takes a licking and keeps on ticking!” Lol. You hardly missed a beat…. Great job! Curious about how long you run your Maxant 20 frame for during each batch? I just got ours this spring and was wondering how others were doing with it.
Mike
We run it at a speed where it begins slinging honey for a few minutes until it seems to be spinning freely and easily. Then we turn it up to full speed until it is no longer slinging honey out. We j must look down the edge with a light. Careful with that kid though lol.
@@brucesbees so how long would you estimate you run it, from start to finish on average?
I really don’t know. Maybe 10 minutes.
Congratulations on a great harvest. On a different subject, what kind of queen excluder do you use? Metal or plastic? If plastic, what kind and are they expendable? Metal ones are very hard to clean. Thanks for your advice? I am in north Al. and look forward to each video as anew bee keeper .
I mostly use plastic. I ordered several from Pierco this year and I like them. I think they are all hard to clean. Given a choice I would probably use metal. They are tougher overall but are much more expensive. I may switch one day but for now will just use what I have.
Great video, Bruce!
I only Have backyard hives. I have a 4 frame extractor. Why do I have such issue with it shaking and being off balance? I have it bolted down to plywood and even stand on the plyWood but it still shakes and moves!
Yes it is always an issue. Out extractors are bolted down to the floor and they still tend to work their way loose sometimes. The only thing I know to do is try to distribute the weight as evenly as possible but even then it can get a little wild. We have done a lot of leaning on extractors over the years.
You can use caster roller bearings underneath a board to allow the extractor to walk about a bit.Try to get even size cut Combs,if pollen in combs will get uneven as extraction proceeds.never leave motorised extractor running unattended
What does the frame look like after the honey is extracted? How Is the empty comb utilized?
It looks pretty much the same. Just empty. I store the comb and use it again in the future.
@@brucesbees oh sweet! I didn’t know it could be reused
Yes. Comb is like gold to the beekeeper. If you can preserve it the bees can reuse it without having to put forth the effort Ot build more. I allows them to focus on other things like honey production and helps maximize the harvest.
Sweet !
Hello mr. Bruce, may i ask how many hives you took honey off of to get 120 supers/70 buckets of honey?
Probably 60 or 70 but I am not sure.
@@brucesbees thank you mr. Bruce! I appreciate it. I got upto 9 big hives and 5 nucs this year, 3rd year beekeeping, 2nd year grafting, only ever bought my first 2 hives and did the rest with splits. but had to sell them all to leave germany with the military to come back stateside. When i finish my military time i am hoping to get up to 50 or so and thought that was roughly what you had.
What does the paint roller do after decapping
You mean the pin roller? We use it on any cells that may not have been sliced by the Simple Harmony Farms Uncapper. Sometimes there is a low area or really tough old comb. We just try to make sure that pretty much all the cells are sliced.
🍯🐝🍯
What does 5 gallons of honey sell for?
It depends on the area. I mostly store mine in the buckets and bottle the honey up in different sized bottles depending on need. But if someone wants a 5 gallon bucket my current price is $250.
What is the name of the machine you guys clean the floor with at the end
It’s a pressure washer with a surface cleaner attachment.
I take some honey if you don't know what to do with it.lol. I Would love to know more about your decapper and those awesome tables..
We definitely have honey for sale haha. Here is the link to the Simple Harmony Farms Uncapper: simpleharmonyfarms.com/uncapper. Rusty customized the uncapping tanks from products he purchased locally. They work well.
at 8,20 bruce im tellin ya ,,, ouch,,,,,,
Yes no doubt. But could have been much worse.
How many hives did this come off of?
Not sure but probably 60or so
@@brucesbees that's awesome! This year was my biggest year as well but only had about 5 out of my 10 hives to pull honey from. I was excited for getting 20 gallons worth!
Great video, what was that floor scrubbing brush Rusty was using, that looked real neat!
I think it was just a surface cleaner attachment for his pressure washer
What are you do with the bees
The bees are still in the hives. We try to keep them alive through the winter and then harvest the honey again next year.
yesss the video i asked for haha and this is my first year bee keeping and my queen died but they seem to be trying to replace her by making queens cells do you think they will still be able to make a queen and get a good enough colony going before winter to survive
They might. Bees are amazing. Time will tell!
Dang ! How’d you loose you finger?
Table saw injury in 2014. Originally it was repaired, sort of, but the repair failed and the finger was amputated in January 2018
so how hard is it to sell honey? I never buy it and never been in the position to try and sell it lol. But I want to dabble in apiculture since I like gardening.
It’s not hard to sell honey but it is a little difficult to sell this much! Hopefully we can get it sold though.
@@brucesbees Well good luck getting it all sold! looks good :)
SWEET
Thanks for the video! Do you have a cappings spinner, or how do you process your wax cappings?
I just let the bees clean it up and then melt it down and process it. Still trying to get that process figured out. I don’t love working with the wax but it is something that needs to be done.
Nice_ How long will you let the bees clean t h e wet supers
I came by and picked up the trailer a couple of days later and moved it to the farm. Just unloaded them yesterday (one week later). But really anytime after the bees are done cleaning them out is good.
I always heard never to give honey to bees that didnt produce it in the first place, something something about cross infecting colonies? Correct me if i am wrong, new beekeeper here.
I have heard that too but have done it for years and never had an issue.
@@brucesbees oh okay good... thanks for responding!
Oh yeah well I just filled up 2 buckets 😂
I hope the extra flavour got filtered out 🩸
I never worked with it after the injury until I cleaned it up. Then I wore a glove when working after that.
Great video. How long did you leave the trailer with the empty supers? Those bees were in a free for all. Did you clean up at the end with only water in the extractor or did you add soap?
We left the supers on the trailer for 6 days but probably could have taken them off sooner. We just used water. Honey melts away quickly with water. There is a good chance the extractors won’t be used again until next year so I’m sure we will make sure they are appropriately clean before using again.
Take you extractors outside, and the bees will clean them bone dry.
Yes have done that before and it works well.
Sweeeet!
Im speaking for your Daughter………. Don’t be in a rush dad ! It could have went much worse then skin disappearing!
Yes for sure. I am fortunate.
dry that cut off, slap some crazy glue on it and keep right on extracting.
Congratulations. Man, I gotta start doing a better job. You put me to shame
I’m sure you do just fine. I have let it get out of control a bit haha.